and sings the song without the words
by Ruadhnait
Summary: And never stops at all. Feanor, Nerdanel, and the end of all things. Very belated birthday present for Crackers.


**And sings the song without the words**

And never stops at all. Fëanor, Nerdanel, and the end of all things.

**A/N: I am so very sorry, Crackers!*cries* You must have thought I forgot about you...well, anyway, here this is. A MONTH LATER.**

**I.**

They found her huddled at the foot of Taniquetil, her cheek pressed against the dark earth, her hair tangled and damp with the dew and fog of that endless night. Or rather, she found herself, suddenly, and she was alone for the first time in her life, and they were gone.

They were gone. She pulled herself up into a sitting position, wincing at the pain of even that small movement, for every muscle and tendon in her body ached as though she'd slept for a thousand years. But she found the strength, somehow, to stand, to walk, even, the miles between Taniquetil and Tirion, though the going was slow, and the distance long.

It seemed that the storm had passed, and a silence as of after a storm lay on the gently sloping hills and deep forests around Tirion. She stopped, once, by a river, and gazed for a while at the trembling starlight mirrored on the dark and glassy surface.

They were gone. And she was alone.

She kept walking.

Fëanor's house in Tirion was locked and empty, and the shuttered windows stared back at her like so many blank and indifferent faces. She slumped to the ground, her hand still brushing the doorknob, heedless of the few people lingering in doorways or passing without turning, silent as ghosts. And pale, too, like the walls of Tirion, faintly white in the dim starlight, pale like the towers rising far into the gloom.

There was nothing for her here. Finwë was dead, and Fëanor was gone. Her sons were gone, and Fingolfin was gone…

She left Tirion, and went to the shores of Calacirya, and sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, the waves lapping gently at her feet. The darkness pressed close about her, and the silence roared in her ears with the voices of the host on the journey East.

The last time in the world she saw her son Maedhros, he looked weary and old, far from the fiery young prince she knew. _I would not have you dragged into this madness_, he said, though she had never asked to accompany them. She reached out to touch his cheek, and his eyes meeting hers for the last time were hollow and tearless. She stood motionless, watching helplessly, as he turned away from her and slowly left the tent where they were standing.

_It was always going to be this way, Nerdanel_, Fingolfin said, when she spoke with him for the last time, hurriedly, as his people began to march. He put his hand on her shoulder, briefly, his eyes sympathetic, but the tide of the host swept them apart, and he was gone, the cries of that mighty army swelling to a great clamor, echoing and re-echoing beneath the murky sky.

They told her later of the blood at Alqualondë, of the stolen ships, of the glittering beaches stained and sullied, the pearl-white quays splattered with the blood spilled carelessly like dark and bitter wine, of the tides lapping the shore and leaving it red. She imagined a sea turned to blood, with ships riding like restless spirits tossed by the driving wind, the cries of slayers and slain lost in the storm, the rain pouring down and leaving the ships red, always red, seeping through the cracks in those beautiful swan-ships, sails tattered and stained (red), blood on swords, on hands, rising up like a tide to swallow them all.

She suppressed a scream. (_It was always going to be this way_, murmured Fingolfin (Fëanor?) in her ear, eyes sympathetic.) _Always going to be this way_.

She found a place to sleep in the great and echoing halls of Finwë's palace. She did not think she would sleep, at first, as she lay on her side and imagined that she could see in the half-light of her candle the pool of dark blood seeping across the deathly white floor, blood dripping from the ceiling. A cold wind blew through the open window; the fluttering curtains brushed her back with the touch of a ghost's fingers. She closed her eyes against the blood and the ghosts and found herself sinking, falling into the dark behind her eyelids. (It was not at all unpleasant.)

She slept.

She found that, after that sleep, the waking did not seem quite as nightmarish, though the familiar rhythm of the days, the alternating gold and silver light, was gone, and the land of Valinor drifted in that timeless night with nothing to mark the slow years but the wheeling of the stars above.

She slept when weariness overwhelmed her, and yet there were times- one time, in particular- when she wished she had not.

She dreamed of fire. Of fire, consuming and devouring, leaping up to the inky sky and scorching the heavens, at once destroying all that approached it and eaten in upon itself, terrible energy and terrible emptiness. _Fëanáro_, she whispered in her sleep.

Her youngest son, the little one, dying in fire, skin blackening and cracking, hair blazing, limbs flayed and bloody and raw, eyes even to the last awake, terribly awake, seeking her, calling her, though the boundless seas and the mountains of the gods stood between them- _Mother_.

Even when the fire had burned itself to nothingness, still his eyes sought hers. _Mother_.

_My son!_ –She awoke cold and shivering, though the night was warm, half expecting to feel flames licking at her own flesh, the acrid smell of smoke. The darkness pressed close around her, whispering with the voice of fire and water and blood and all destruction, and nothing had ever been so real.

Finarfin returned some time afterwards, eyes hollow and tearless, with a great part of his people trailing behind him, but none of his children, Nerdanel noted. She went to him, seeking news, any news. He only shook his head and turned away.

She went back to her father's house in the country eventually, and she didn't know why, but it felt like going home again, from a country of strangers. She hardly knew what to say- how to say anything really?- of the nightmares, the blood, her son was dead-

"I was lonely," she said at last, lamely. "Oh, father, the halls in Tirion are so empty and quiet-" That was the least of it. But he knew.

Mahtan drew his eldest daughter into an embrace and held her tightly, and she buried her face in his chest, feeling his hand, heavy and rough in her hair. "You have always a place here," he told her gently.

Her mother was waiting for her inside. She said nothing, only reached for Nerdanel's hand and pressed it to her cheek.

They asked little of her in those first few days and weeks, her mother and father and younger sister. She went back to the room she had shared with her sister, before she had had a house of her own. It was oddly comforting to lie awake and listen to the gentle rhythm of her sister's breathing, to reach across the gap between their beds and squeeze her hand, to see the surprise in her eyes and then her secret, kind smile as she awoke.

She kept dreaming. No- (_law, nor love, nor league of hell_) family or comfort in the world could keep the dreams from coming to her. She saw with terrible, knife-sharp clarity the blood at Alqualondë (always the blood, and she woke from that dream damp with sweat and shivering, with again the sea of blood roaring in her ears, pounding against her skull). She dreamed of Maedhros at the burning of the ships, with the flames reflected in his eyes, and behind them nothing.

(_I would not have you dragged into this madness._)

She saw Fëanor's death. (_It was always going to be this way_.)

The pain was all but physical. She felt the force of each blow, each gash as she lay on her side, curled as she had been beneath Taniquetil, her breaths coming in great, shuddering gasps. It was worse, she thought vaguely, somewhere in the haze of pain, than giving birth. It was worse than what the dying must have been to Míriel and Finwë and the slain of Alqualondë.

(It is like dying, what we are doing, Mother. It is like being born. None of us shall ever be the same again.)

-and the sensation, brief but terrifying, of being two, and then one, as his spirit was torn from his flesh, fleeing far, driven on the wild avenging wind that scattered the remnants of his body even as it crumbled and fell to ash. _Fëanáro!_ She could not keep back the scream.

When it was over, she seemed to remember waking as though from sleep, with the cool, white walls of her room staring back at her indifferently. She gazed for a while at the curve of her own wrist where it lay on the pillow, passive and cool and motionless, like some strange white flower. She sat up painfully and got to her feet, steadying herself when the floor tilted and spun around her, before making her way to the window and throwing up what little remained in her stomach, then pushing her damp hair away from her face. She turned back to face her empty room, and the long years stretching out before her, alone.

After that, she wept, for the first time since the darkness had fallen on Valinor. She cried and could not stop, and when her father and sister came to her, she could tell them nothing.

Maedhros' eyes boring into hers were like those of a dead thing, empty and glassy and grey. _I wanted to keep you out of this_, he said with a harsh and cracked laugh, indicating with a skeletal hand the bleak and blighted country stretching far below the peak where he hung, his naked flesh strangely white beneath the festering gashes, the wide and bloody stripes laid open and oozing horribly. One of his heels kicked feebly against the rock. _Mother_. His head sank lower, his matted hair falling around his face, his right shoulder twisted unnaturally. _This madness_.

_This madness_. She watched the young sun come red over the horizon, the light seeping into every crack and crevice of Arda. For a moment she forgot she was supposed to rejoice and instead wanted to run, to hide, to burrow again into the reassuring darkness to which she had become so accustomed. Upon Thangorodrim Maedhros winced and turned his head away. The light shone through his pale grey eyes, and against the rock his flesh was ghostly, even transparent.

_Mother_. Beyond the countless years and the bitterness of the separation, his eyes sought hers, and he was weeping.

Nerdanel's sister was wedded sometime later, to a youngish Vanyarin prince distantly akin to Ingwë. (_Cross-breeding, my dear_, Fëanor murmured in her ear, only half in jest. _The line is no longer pure. _ ) She did not have it in her to smile indulgently. Instead, she shook him off. _Don't be an idiot, Fëanáro_, she murmured. She rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on.

Tirion, Nerdanel thought later, was unusually cheerful. Even festive. She supposed they had every reason to rejoice. It was the first marriage since the great darkness had fallen on Valinor; a union between a Vanya and a Noldo was even more to be commended, as diplomacy or something of that sort. _Do you think it escapes their notice that the bride is the sister of Fëanor's wife? –Fëanor, go away_, she hissed.

Mahtan squeezed her hand where they stood at Finarfin's side. According to the custom, the High King presided over the ceremony, with the bride and groom's closest family acting as witnesses. Nerdanel's sister was radiant with joy where she stood, dressed in brilliant white with a crown of roses in her hair. The tender look in her new husband's eyes as he bent down to kiss her for the first time was a little to familiar to Nerdanel, and she had to turn her head away.

Afterwards, she spoke to Finarfin, as they stood together on a high balcony watching the merrymaking unfold far below. Nerdanel thought she could see her sister in the crush of people, a slender white-clad figure suddenly seeming very small and far away. "I suppose this will be remembered as a great day in the history of our people," she said, surprised at the bitterness in her voice.

"Nerdanel, does it still ache?" he asked gently. She only looked at him. He sighed and turned his face back to the scene below.

"Do you forget them already, Arafinwë?" she asked.

"No," he said quietly. "I do not. But life goes on," with a sad smile. "Life goes on."

And indeed it did, after a fashion. Nerdanel's sister moved away with her husband to a little house in the countryside. Within a year or so they had beautiful little golden-haired twins, a boy and a girl. She would go to see them occasionally, and each time was surprised by the absolute peace in which their lives were unfolding. (She thought perhaps five or six hundred years had passed since they had left.)

_Nerdanel_. His voice was pained. _You're ignoring me._

She did not look up from the drawing before her, a range of mountains, black and threatening, with the faint shape of an eagle flying far above. Or was it a dragon? She couldn't tell. _I know you're there_, she said irritably.

_Of course. Intent on your work, as always. Please, do not let me disturb you._ She idly traced a border of flames along the edges of the paper. She felt him drawing closer.

_That's beautiful. I don't think I ever told you enough how talented you are._

_Shameless flatterer._ She half laughed.

_Nerdanel! _Genuine hurt laced his voice.

_Don't 'Nerdanel' me_, she said, pushing her paper away from her. The border of fire was starting to consume the rest of the picture. She thought she saw the edges of the paper curl and blacken, gossamer strands of smoke rising into the air.

_You're a sculptor, anyway. Why are you drawing? You know how lifelike your statues are._

_Which is precisely why I'm not making any_, she said. _Who would I sculpt? You? _She felt her breath catch in her throat, ragged and hoarse.

_You could do animals. You always liked horses._

That was a lie, Nerdanel knew. _No, I don't like horses. They frighten me. You were the one who loved them. You taught the children to ride._

She felt his silence boring into her. It was unbearable. _Fëanáro, why are you here? You're supposed to be dead. _ She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, watching the morning light dance in red and gold behind her eyelids, feeling tears prickle in the backs of her eyes.

_My dear, have I ever been one for following orders? _

_No, you haven't_, she said ruefully. _You always were a stubborn idiot. _ She could feel him drawing away from her. _Fëanáro-_

Mahtan was worried. "Nerdanel, you spend too much time alone."

"I'm not alone," she protested half-heartedly.

"It is not good for you to be by yourself so often," he said.

She shook her head, laughing muzzily. "Father-"

"I will speak to Finarfin," he said.

"Please do," she said, turning her face to the wall as he left, pressing her hands against the stone. _Father_, she thought, _if you knew._ She tilted her head back and let the sunlight shine on her fa,

Strange, she thought, that she always dreamed of fire.

She could see Maedhros as though from a very great distance, a small, remote figure standing in a circle of barren trees. In the center was a pyre, with flames leaping up and licking greedily at the overhanging branches. The forest around him stretched out dark and wide and pathless, and she imagined that the whole thing was caught into one great blaze, branches snapping and blackening, sparks flying into the dark sky. The flames, she thought, had a thousand facets as of a diamond (Fëanáro had given her diamonds on their wedding day, and she felt a wild, insane laugh tear free from somewhere inside her), flashing and reflecting in a myriad of fragile, sparkling colors. The fire receded and it was his face before her again, but with twin infernos raging where his eyes should have been. _It has always been this, hasn't it? Whatever they did, it was your will, moving in them. _

She woke, and knew that her sons were dead.

Curufin, they would tell her later, when the first fleets came from Beleriand. Curufin had died, and Caranthir, and Celegorm had died at Doriath.

She always found this irritating. Did they think she had not _known_?

No, she had known from the beginning.

She woke that day, and stared at the wall beside her bed for a while, numb with incomprehension. Sons. Dead. She struggled to make sense of the words. It was a while before the full weight of the realization hit her, hard, like a blow to the stomach, and she doubled over and would have been sick had she had anything to bring up. As it was, she dug her nails into her palm and watched the blood seep from behind her skin, thinking perhaps that when the pain grew unbearable, she would wake from what could only be another dream. They could not be dead.

(They were dead.)

She rose from her bed and walked over to the window, watching the first faint rose-sheen of dawn creep into the ash-grey sky, the fields and forests and towns laid out in a quiet patchwork below her.

Ten thousand years, and they all stretched out bleak and barren before her.

She had never felt so bereft, so utterly bereft.

(Life goes on, Finarfin said, reaching out to touch her cheek, and the grief for the lost generations was in his eyes, and the bitter pain of the separation. _And death_.)

_Fëanáro. Has this always been your plan, to rob me of those things _

_dearest to me? _

She felt him hesitate. _Nerdanel- I never wanted this_.

_It has come to pass nonetheless, and at your sons' expense. _

_I was a fool,_ he said, simply, and she laughed.

_I never thought I would hear you say that. Fëanáro, why are you here? _

_I'm not here, Nerdanel. I'm not even real._ His voice was pained.

_Fëanáro..._ Her voice broke. _My sons- your sons- are dead_.

_I know. Nerdanel-_ She stood and wrapped her arms around herself.

_I should have never loved you_, she told him fiercely. _I should have known that this could only end in grief. _

In Beleriand, Maedhros and Maglor buried their littlest brother together.

She saw Maglor fall to his knees, digging his fingers into his palms, then raise his head and cry out heedlessly, reckless in his grief. Maedhros reached out to touch his shoulder, briefly, before pulling him to his feet. The evening swallowed them both and the red glow of the burning Havens vanished behind them.

She went to Mahtan. "He's dead," she said quietly. "The little one.

Telvo."

Mahtan's jaw clenched. "Nerdanel, you don't know that."

She cut him off. "No, atarinya. I know. He's gone. It's- oh-" She ran her fingers through her hair impatiently. "He was so young," she said at last, hopelessly. "I begged Fëanáro to leave me Telvo and Pityo. But he would not."

She closed her eyes, feeling tears seep past her eyelashes. "And now they are dead."

_And now they are dead_, she thought bleakly, _for always_, and she felt that great bleak emptiness welling up inside her; she felt thin, as though there was nothing left inside her and at any moment she might crack and shatter into a thousand shivering pieces and lie scattered like broken china over the pale stones of the courtyard.

"We are going to war," Finarfin said, tersely. His hands were clenched tightly on the arms of his throne.

Across the room, Anairë stood. Her face was white. "This is madness."

"We owe it to our brethren in the East," Finarfin said, his voice a little pleading, and Nerdanel remembered him silent and downcast when they firstbrought the news of Fëanáro's death to Valinor. (_You always were fool, Arafinwë_.)

Eärwen did not look up. "They murdered my kin at Alqualondë," she said evenly.

"We need not join them," Ingwë, directly across the room from where Nerdanel sat, said placidly. "We know the host of the Valar will return victorious this time. They need none of our help."

"They call you wise, Ingwë," said another of Finarfin's counsellors, a dark-haired Noldo from Tirion. "Yet I would hardly call it wisdom to hang back from battle because victory is assured and then reap of its spoils."

An angry murmur ran through the Vanyar assembled around Ingwë. "Enough, Aulendil," Finarfin said quietly.

"We have not the strength," objected one of Eärwen's brothers.

"The Valar will win this battle. It will be enough for us to fight," Nerdanel heard someone else say.

_It was never enough, Nerdanel, for us to fight, was it?_ She heard Fëanor behind her. They were beginning to argue now, voices rising rapidly. Finarfin looked beleaguered, helpless. She closed her eyes. _The throne has always suited you ill, my brother, gentler than your kin,_ she thought, before the rising tide of the quarrelling voices washed over her, and she swallowed, painfully, eyes straining against the dark behind her eyelids.

When she opened her eyes, they were all staring at her. She realized suddenly that she had said nothing during the whole discussion. (They told her

that she did that sometimes, closed her eyes and retreated into herself. She never knew why she had acquired the habit; it seemed rather pointless, hiding in herselfwhen there was no shelter there, only more darkness.) Feeling vaguely self-conscious, she stood. Behind her, Fëanor shifted slightly.

"We must go," she said. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded harsh, too loud. She paused, unsure of what to say next. She imagined Fëanor's voice, strangely regretful, and Maedhros on the night that they left. _I never wanted this._

"Fëanáro led the Noldor out of Valinor vowing to avenge the wrongs done by Morgoth to his people. Surely you, too, must realize the depth of the destruction wrought in Valinor and Beleriand by our foe." Her voice cracked, and she swallowed again. "Let us go, and finish what they started. Let us go and avenge all those who lie dead there." She felt herself gaining strength, and she stood a little straighter. "Let us avenge the House of Finwë." No one spoke. "What deed can we do now, to match those who won such glory in Beleriand? Let this be the final victory of the Noldor."

And so they went. Nerdanel only remembered later Finarfin concluding the council, and opening the great doors of the room where they sat, speaking to the people that stood assembled in the square, and then the great roar that arose from the crowd, echoing and re-echoing beneath the summer sky.

_It is not over, Fëanáro, not yet. _

"Will you not go with us?" Finarfin was pleading again. She sighed and turned back to face him.

"No," she said, for what seemed like the thousandth time.

"I would think that you, Nerdanel, of all people, would wish to go," he said, and then, "Perhaps your sons still live."

"You stray too far, Arafinwë," she said softly. "You speak of that about

which you know nothing." She struck the railing of the balcony where they stood,

high above Tirion, watching the sunset stain the line of pale stone columns rose-redand fiery gold, with their long dark shadows stretching out behind them.

"You can wield a sword," he persisted.

"Such has been my burden, yes," she said. "Arafinwë, my brother." She turned and reached for his hand. "Go and win this victory for me."

He did not ask again, and together they stood in the deepening dusk, watching the sunset stain the world blood-red.

A month or so later, when all the hosts of the Valar and the Vanyar and (such as they were) the Noldor, together with the fleets of the Telerin (still bloodstained, still dripping red, and she turned her face away) left, sailing East, she stood with the crowd on the docks, bidding them farewell. When the ships had faded to faint specks against the pale horizon, barely distinguishable from the white flecks of the foam-capped breakers in the distance and the crowd had begun to disperse, silent with something like awe, Mahtan came and stood beside her.

She remained there for a long while before turning to face him. He half-smiled.

"I wish I were there," she said, suddenly. "I wish-" she broke off. "I have borne everything with them from the very beginning. I wish I could have at least seen their realms in the East, if they were truly as fair and free as Fëanáro said they would be."

"Nerdanel," Mahtan said quietly. "They met with defeat in Beleriand. When Eärendil came, he came from a land ravaged. A land ruined."

"I still would have gone with them," she said.

"Nerdanel-" He shook his head.

"I would have met ruin with them, and gone down fighting." She let her gaze sink into him before turning back to the empty sea.

It was not long before she felt his hand on her shoulder. "I know," she said, keeping her eyes on that vast expanse that separated her from her sons. She knew what he could never understand. "I know."

_I'm afraid I'm going to bother you again, Nerdanel_.

_And why am I not surprised?_ She attempted to laugh it off.

_So they have gone to war_, he said, suddenly serious.

_They have. _

_Nerdanel, my time is ending_.

_It ended a very long time ago. _

_You don't understand_, he said, exasperated.

_Perhaps I am not as talented as you thought, then? _

_Nerdanel!_ He seemed hurt. _This Age has been mine. My works have seen their fruition in these years. _

_I should say so. _

_But it is ending_. She imagined that he paced. _It is ending- Nerdanel, I am sorry. _

_For what_, she almost asked automatically. She could feel his gaze on her, concerned.

_I have taken from you everything you loved. _

_Yes. You shouldn't flatter yourself with that thought, but it is true. _

_Why did you,_ he said, in what was not so much a question as a statement.

_Did I what? _

_Become entangled in my fate. _

She sighed. _Because I loved you. Fëanáro. I love you still more than I have loved any other. _

_And I left you. _

_And you left me. But I did not leave you, even when I went away from our house to my father's_, she continued, a little doggedly, _and when the end comes, I will still be waiting for you_. He said nothing.

_My sons. Fëanáro, they were my little ones. Losing them was like losing my own life. I do not think you can understand. I do not know if I can forgive you for this, just yet. But I will still love you, and I will never leave you. But you need to leave me. _

_Leave?_ He was startled.

_Yes, leave me again. Your time is over. _

_It is._ He stirred. _Nerdanel, as to why I tried to stay...I don't want to _

_become a memory. I don't want to be forgotten._ He sounded faintly panic-stricken.

_You will not_, she said quietly. _I do not forget you_.

Ëonwë came to her, when the host of Valinor came back, breathless, exhilarated, swept up in the glorious blaze of victory. "Nerdanel," he said, studying her. She met his gaze firmly. "Tell me."

"Your sons, lady," he said. "Nelyafinwë and Kanafinwë. They came by night to the camp of our host when the battle was won." She waited, unable to discern even the faintest spark of something- anger, pity, grief- in those implacable sky-blue eyes. "They slew the guards and took the Silmarils."

(Well, said the faint defiant voice somewhere in the back of her mind, after so many deaths, surely these few could be discounted.) -The Silmarils. She kept her eyes on his, willing her voice to remain steady. "There is more. Tell me."

"They would have been slain there. I forbade it, and they fled, I know not where." His gaze hardened. "But my all-seeing Lord has told me that the elder, Nelyafinwë, cast himself into a fiery chasm with one of the jewels. I know not what befell Kanafinwë, and my Lord has not revealed it to me." She kept silent.

"They could not endure the pain with which the Silmarils burned them, that is all," he said simply. He bowed, a little stiffly. "I am sorry for your loss, lady."

_No, Ëonwë, you are not sorry_, she thought, watching the swirl of his cloak as he turned on his heel and left her, _you who bowed before my husband on the night he rebelled against the Valar. You are not sorry. _

_I never wanted this. (This madness.) _

_No_, she thought. She imagined the dark rising up to take Maedhros even as he fell. _You did not, any of you. _

Maglor, she knew, wandered on some forsaken beach, lost in the roaring of the merciless winds and the eternal sea. A lost soul under a darkening sky.

My sons. She remembered the blood of the thousands slain. The fire reaching up to the heavens.

_All the grief,_ she mused, closing her eyes, _it goes on, with life, with death. _

It goes on.

_It goes on, but for you, my sons, it is done. _

They had called the Everlasting Darkness upon themselves, if they failed, she remembered. She imagined it swallowing them now, a great and silent tide reaching out to extinguish the stars.

The house faced west, to the very borders of the world. She went to the window, and looked out. Night was falling fast.

She remembered Amrod at the burning of the ships, and Maedhros on Thangorodrim. (_Mother, and his eyes sought hers, crying out to her_.)

She looked out, beyond Ekkaia, beyond the very borders of the world, beyond the Dark, crying out silently, in response. _I am here. I do not forget you!_

Beyond the walls of the Pelóri, the ages of the world wore on. In Arda, kingdoms rose and fell with no more significance, it seemed, than the rising and setting of the sun to the Powers who sat motionless.

"The son of Findekáno rules in Arda," Mahtan said to her, casually.

She looked up at him, curling her hands around her cup of tea. "Really. Any news of Artanis?"

"Ruling her own realm." He smiled a little.

She sighed. "Of course." She turned around to face him, swivelling in her chair. "Where do you get all this news?"

He shrugged. "Aulë tells me most of what he hears from Manwë, and Manwë sees everything. And the ships of returning Eldar are not infrequent."

Less frequent, perhaps, were Númenorean fleets coming to claim Valinor as their own. Foolish, thought Nerdanel, on the part of the Valar, to put mortals so close to the realm of the Gods, when they clearly could not stand the temptation.

Still, it was a shame, and a very great one. So much fallen, she thought, gazing down from the slopes of Taniquetil where she and many of the others had fled, at the tiny, imperious figure of Ar-Pharazôn far below (courting the wrath of Eru, dancing on the very edge of destruction), so much fallen, so much lost from the grave and noble men she had known in Numenor (she herself having traveled to the Land of the Star once or twice.)

_So much lost_, she thought bleakly, watching those proud fleets buckle and topple into the abyss. _Lost_, she thought, _lost to us in the West is the land where my House fought and died._

She clenched her hands on the railing, feeling the sharp-edged marble dig cruelly into her palms. _So much lost._

Finarfin was alone when she found him. "Brother," she said.

He did not look at her. "You use that title too freely."

"Husband's half-brother, then." She went over to him and stood beside him. He was facing the East, staring at the new sharp, clean divide where the waves fell away and a bridge of air- the Straight Way- connected Valinor to the Hither Lands. "I know," she said gently. "We have lost so much."

"This not least." He turned and met her gaze. "My daughter is still there, and Findekano's son."

"Ereinion, they call him. I know. She will come- they will come."

"I am not sure I want her to," he said slowly.

"And why would that be?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"I do not want her to be forgotten," he said slowly. "It sounds foolish. But I do not want the memory of our realms in Beleriand to be utterly lost to those that come after."

"So you, too, feel it," she said simply.

"He is gone, then," she said, incredulously. "Sauron is defeated."

"Yes." It was Anaire this time, not Finarfin, and Earwen sitting by the window, bent over her sewing. It was rarely that Nerdanel spoke to the wives of her husband's half-brothers. They had not been close, even in the days- so long ago- before the darkness came, in the days of the ancient Treelight. The Treelight. Had those bare and blackened skeletons ever blossomed with light? She closed her eyes and tried to remember.

Galadriel came home not long afterwards. Nerdanel remembered Finarfin weeping for sheer joy and holding his only daughter tightly. She was more beautiful than Nerdanel remembered, with bright golden hair falling down her straight back and the light in her eyes undimmed; ten thousand years in the Hither Lands had washed over her and left her strong. It was a strange thing. Later, when the celebration had died down a little (there was a feast for her, there always was when they came home, and so much more for the daughter of the High King. The high King- it still burned) she came to Nerdanel.

"Let us forget the enmity between us." She extended her hand, and Nerdanel took it.

"There is no enmity," she said, thinking of Feanor and his rage, the hatred burning in Galadriel's heart for him, her husband.

"I would have gone with them," Nerdanel said, after a long silence. "I would have fought beside them until the end."

Galadriel looked at her carefully. "It was madness, Nerdanel. Nothing good came from that hatred- the hatred between our Houses. I only learned wisdom when I learned to forgive." She smiled, a little bitterly.

"I do not like being a memory," Nerdanel said quietly. "I do not enjoy being no more than the vaguest of legends in the minds of those that come after."

"It was always going to be this way," said Galadriel.

_(It was always going to be this way.)_ "They forget. They always forget. Even when I lived in Lothlorien, I was no more than a story, an old wives' tale. Our time is over." She sighed and shook her head.

"It will not be long, Artanis," Nerdanel said quietly. "The world cannot last forever."

And so it was. A thousand years, ten thousand years, she did not know, nor cared. Time was different in the Undying Lands; as though it were one point of piercing brightness, fixed, while the stream flowed on around them.

Outside the walls of the Pelori (raised ever higher now, against the darkness pressing from behind the Door of Night, by the councils of the Valar grown desperate) the world grew dark. They told of a world grown black-hearted, where the lies of Morgoth, the seed of discord, festered, where the mortals strove with one another and the earth and sea ran red with blood.

"The end," she said to her father, after the last attack on Valinor by the monsters that grew strong on the blood of men. "It is soon, is it not?"

Mahtan looked grey and old. The light seemed to shine through his eyes, weary and hollow. "Tell me," she said, going to him and taking his hands in hers. He met her eyes with a gaze that looked frighteningly defeated.

"Yes."

The world grew dark. Inside the Pelori, the Eldar shifted uneasily and fingered their swords.

"It is coming," she said to her father. She could see the sky turning pale grey with the coming dawn. They did not sleep much in the final days of the world. He nodded bleakly.

"No," she said, fiercely. "_He _is coming." Her voice trembled. She went to the window and looked out.

"Father," she said, with the strange joy of one who draws his sword and plunges into the thick of battle knowing he will die. "I know it."

_Feanaro._

And the dawn of the world's last day lightened in the East, red with the promise of fire.


End file.
